"Ah! and therefore Nancy's uncle?"
"Yes, the uncle of Nancy Frost, or of Eloise de Boisdhyver."
"I see," said Dan. "I begin to see."
"Eh bien, monsieur. General Pointelle—the maréchal de Boisdhyver,—left the Inn at the Red Oak upon a mission for the Emperor, then at Elba. Hélas! that mission ended with disaster after the Hundred Days; for, as you know, the Emperor was sent in exile to St. Helena; and, as you may not know, the Maréchal de Boisdhyver was killed on the plains of Waterloo. Allons; when he left Deal, he concealed in a hidden chamber, which one enters, I believe, from a room you call the Oak Parlour, a large treasure, of jewels and gold. This treasure, saved from the debacle in France, he had brought with him to America, and he hid it in the Inn, for the future of his little daughter Eloise. You remember that your mother was to hear something of advantage to her and the child, did not the General return. It was the secret of the treasure and the directions to find it. Well, Monsieur, at Waterloo, you must know, the Maréchal and his brother, the present Marquis, fought side by side. François de Boisdhyver fell, nobly fighting for the glory of France; Marie-Anne had the good fortune to preserve his life, but was taken prisoner by the English. Before the Maréchal received his death wound, the two brothers spoke with each other for the last time. In that moment, monsieur, the Marquis François revealed to the Marquis Marie-Anne that he had abandoned his daughter in America and that he had concealed in your old inn a treasure sufficient to provide for her future. He charged his brother to go to America, if he survived the battle; claim the little Eloise; rescue the treasure, and return with her to France and restore the fallen fortunes of the House of Boisdhyver.
"It took the Marquis Marie-Anne a long time to carry out his brother's dying injunctions," said Dan.
"Ah! but yes. You do not realize that the Marquis Marie-Anne, after the fall of Napoleon, spent many years in a military prison in England, for I have already told you that he fell into the hands of the enemy on the field of Waterloo. When at last he was released, he was aged, broken, and in poverty. His brother, in those dreadful moments on the battlefield, had been able to give him but the briefest description of the Inn at the Red Oak and the hidden treasure. He did not tell him where the treasure was, but only how he might obtain the paper of instructions which the Maréchal had concealed in a curiously-carved old cabinet in the Oak Parlour. The Maréchal, monsieur, loved the mysterious, and chose the device of tearing into two parts this paper of directions and concealing them in different hiding-places of the cabinet. Those directions, after many years, grew vague in the younger brother's memory.
"Eh bien, the Marquis was at last able to make the journey to this country. You must remember he had nothing wherewith to prove his story, if he gave you his confidence at once; and so, he decided, to investigate quietly alone. But he won the confidence of Mademoiselle Nancy,—that is, of his niece, Eloise de Boisdhyver,—and revealed to her the secret of her identity and the mysterious story of the treasure. You follow me in all this, Monsieur Dan?"
"Perfectly, madame," Frost replied. "But as yet you have told me nothing of your own connection with this strange history."
"Pardon, dear boy," rejoined Madame de la Fontaine; "I was about to do so, but there is so much to tell. My own connection with the affair is quite simple. I am an old friend, one of the oldest, of Monsieur le Marquis de Boisdhyver, and, when I was a very young girl, I knew the Maréchal himself. It has been my happiness to be able to prove my friendship for a noble and a fallen family. One day last summer, Monsieur de Boisdhyver told me his brother's dying words, and it was I, Monsieur Dan, who was able to give the money for this strange expedition. The poor Marquis had lost quite all his fortune."
"I understand," said Frost. "But, yet, madame, I do not see the necessity for the secrecy, the mystery, for these strange signals at night, for these midnight investigations, for this schooner and its rough crew, for Nancy's disappearance, for my own imprisonment here."